Ethereum coin mining is available via GeForce RTX 3060
Nvidia implemented a special hash-reduction system for Ethereum mining with its new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card series last month.
This system was supposed to reduce mining performance by about 50 percent, but multiple reports now claim crypto companies have bypassed protection.
The Japanese PC Watch site revealed for the first time that Nvidia’s protection can be bypassed without the need to modify the driver or BIOS.
German ComputerBase has since confirmed the PC Watch report, revealing that the latest test driver 470.05 from Nvidia automatically unlocks performance for most owners of the GeForce RTX 3060 series graphics cards.
Andreas Schilling, editor at Hardwareluxx, supported these findings as well.
And the beta driver appears to unlock Ethereum's mining performance across a variety of GeForce RTX 3060 series graphics cards, which was likely not what Nvidia had planned for for its test program.
The 470.05 driver is designed for developers to test WSL performance and new features, such as support for OpenCL 3.0.
Nvidia originally restricted mining performance across the GeForce RTX 3060 series of graphics cards in an effort to direct cryptocurrency miners away from these cards.
Nvidia offers a new CMP cryptocurrency mining wizard for Ethereum miners instead.
And the beta driver bypassing Ethereum's mining restrictions is sure to make the cards even more attractive to cryptocurrency miners now.
Nvidia was confident of its software's limitations on the mining performance of the GeForce RTX 3060 series of graphics cards.
"It's not just a driver," Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia's chief communications officer, said last month. There is a secure connection between the driver, graphics card chip and BIOS firmware that prevents the hash rate limiter from being removed.